July saw the Dash careen downwards in the standings, going 7-20 to cement themselves into the cellar of the High-A East League’s South Division. That includes a six-game sweep by the Bowling Green Hot Rods. Overall, the Dash are 31-49. They have just five more wins than the Kannapolis Cannon Ballers, who notably won two games in the entire month of May.
Yolbert Sánchez was promoted to the Barons in the middle of the month, leaving him with a .286/.340/.387 High-A slash line that encompasses five home runs, seven doubles, 18 walks, and 33 strikeouts. He has been absolutely tearing it up in AA, batting .488/.522/.558 in 11 games entering Wednesday; he’s hit in 14 straight, including his final two games with the Dash.
His absence in the Dash lineup, though, means that more pressure is on Yoelqui Céspedes to produce. Céspedes, whose shoulder issue finally cleared up enough for him to start playing the outfield around the same time as Sánchez’s promotion, had a decent first full month of affiliated ball, putting up a .273/.314/.434 line in July. His first game not in the DH slot was July 17, when he played center field, and in 15 games since then he’s batting .323/.391/.452 with one home run, five doubles, and four walks to 17 strikeouts; he hit safely in eight straight from July 21 to July 29, with six of those being multi-hit games. Mostly he’s been playing center, but has spent a few games in right. He’s started his August by going 3-for-13 with three doubles.
Also promoted to the Barons, just days after Sánchez, was outfielder Ian Dawkins, who played in 28 games for the Dash, failed to get a hit in just six of those games, and still ended up with a line of .246/.315/.360. Dawkins started the season with the Barons, playing 18 games with a line of .246/.297/.362 before his demotion, and has finally escaped the .246 curse—at least for now—by going 12-for-35 in nine games since his return (.343/.395/.571). He did provide the Dash with some much-needed offensive pop when he first joined them.
That pop is now being supplied by Alex Destino, the 25-year-old right fielder. Destino had a chilly first two months of the season before finally finding his bat consistently in July, hitting .313/.412/.663 with eight home runs, five doubles, 13 walks, and 27 strikeouts over 23 games. That includes a three-dong outburst on July 29, part of a two-day stretch where he went 7-for-10 with four total dingers and eight RBI. To start August, he is 3-for-12 with two home runs; he leads the team with 17 total, tied for fourth for the High-A East League lead, and has rehabilitated his overall slash line to .254/.339/.508.
Third baseman Luis Curbelo was also having trouble putting bat on ball in the first half of the season, although he saw good results when he did (of 38 hits in May and June, 24 were for extra bases). He had a much better July, though, despite a couple of rough stretches, and was even able to put together an eight-game hit streak. He batted .261/.306/.478 with five home runs, five doubles, and six walks to 28 strikeouts. While he’s relinquished the team home run lead to Destino, Curbelo’s 15 are still good for sixth in the league.
Lenyn Sosa had a June that was hard to top, capped off by a 17-game hitting streak that extended into early July. He ran into a little bit of the mid-summer doldrums, going 11-for-51 in the first half of the month with no walks (.216/.216/.431), then returned to June form: a 10-game hitting streak and a nice .319/.347/.420 line in his last 16 games, including a four-hit performance to open August. So far, Sosa is putting together a really nice year for his age-21 season; the biggest worry spot might be his 77 strikeouts in 78 games (compared to 12 walks). He’s been playing shortstop exclusively since Sánchez’s departure; they had previously been splitting time with each other between short and second base.
Also, Luis Robert was there, or maybe it was just a dream…
The rest of the position players are a scrappy group of fairly versatile players, none of whom are knocking down the door with any of their tools but are still worth a mention. Jagger Rusconi—who, admittedly, has an 80-grade name—has spent brief stints with both the Cannon Ballers and the ACL White Sox this season, and has been handling the lion’s share of time second base and some left field since Sánchez ascended. A switch hitter originally drafted by the Red Sox in 2015, Rusconi has hit safely in all but two of his 12 games played with the Dash, batting .293/.370/.366 coming into Wednesday’s game (where he went hitless). Brandon Bossard has also been lending his glove to the infield, mostly at second base when Rusconi is sitting. Bossard is a light hitter, but can theoretically provide a modicum of flexibility by heading to the mound in blowouts. Hilariously, the five runs he allowed in 2.1 innings with the Cannon Ballers this year were all unearned.
Travis Moniot is another guy who’s been playing all over the place, with appearances in all slices of the outfield and first and second base. An injury limited his playing time in 2019 to just 19 games overall, three of those with the Dash, but this season he’s healthy and playing almost every day, although he hasn’t been able to return to the level of performance he had as a 21-year-old hitting .289/.391/.412 for Great Falls in 2018. In 50 games with the Dash, he has a .156/.290/.340 slash line.
Duke Ellis has been an outfield mainstay all year, although he hit the Injured List on July 25 and is yet to return. Like many of his teammates, Ellis has not had a lot of luck at the plate, but unlike them, he has stolen 23 bases. He stole only four in July, but somehow is still in third place in the High-A East, four bags behind Bowling Green’s Greg Jones.
Behind the plate, Gunnar Troutwine and Evan Skoug have been sharing time recently after Troutwine filled in for Skoug for a few weeks due to injury. Skoug is just 6-for-35 with six walks in 11 games since his return on July 15; Troutwine is 8-for-41 with nine walks over that stretch. You might think that defensively is where they differ, and while you might be right, both have six passed balls this season, Troutwine in 21 games, Skoug in 26. Runners have been successful in 23 of 33 attempts against Troutwine (30% caught stealing) and in 26 of 39 attempts against Skoug (33%). Kleyder Sanchez has also made a few starts at the position.
The Dash don’t really have a designated first baseman; it’s been Lázaro Leal playing there most often recently, with ineffectual mop-up guy and more effectual outfielder both also on his resume. He went from the bench to regular play and appears to have benefitted from doing so, slashing .240/.406/.480 in that time (7-for-28, two home runs, seven walks, seven strikeouts). AJ Gill is spotting Leal at first and also making appearances in left field and DH, and Samir Dueñez is also spending some time at first during his rehab assignment (he homered there on Wednesday). Tyler Osik played two games at first of his three total in July between two IL stints, where he remains now.
Luis Mieses has returned to the team after spending 52 games with the Cannon Ballers, where he hit .305/.347/.463 with six home runs; he’s 4-for-10 with two doubles in three games back.
Pitching has not been the team’s strong suit. Their staff ace, Taylor Varnell, was finally promoted to Birmingham in July after giving up four runs in back-to-back outings, his worst two starts of the year, because that’s just how baseball works sometimes. Bailey Horn was a starter who showed some promise despite allowing 16 runs in 11 innings with the team before transmogrifying at the trade deadline into Ryan Tepera.
Davis Martin has the most starts of any other pitcher with 17 and has alternated between solid outings and terrible ones. Johan Dominguez has similarly turned in some very good starts and a handful of truly bad ones, although he’s got the best numbers of any remaining starter, sporting a 4.80 ERA and 1.150 WHIP over 65.2 innings (17 walks, 74 strikeouts). He struck out a season (and career) high of 10 on August 4 while walking nobody and allowing two runs over five innings.
Kaleb Roper and Dan Metzdorf, both drafted in 2019, are both stretching out as starters; Metzdorf opened the season as a relief pitcher and Roper didn’t join the team until June. Both are still searching for an effective way to retire hitters. Isaiah Carranza has had the opposite journey, finding himself in the bullpen after going 1-6 in his first seven starts of the year, a record that was not entirely deserved; he has been slightly better out of the pen.
Caleb Freeman, the team’s top relief prospect, was promoted to the Barons after a strong month of pitching, 10 innings of four-run ball with two walks and 14 strikeouts. With Luke Shilling out for the year, starter/reliever Jeremiah Burke still injured, and Lane Ramsey already promoted twice to Charlotte, it’s a pretty dire bullpen situation in Winston-Salem; the club is second to last in the league in reliever ERA at 5.63. Righty Brian Glowicki has been perhaps the best of them; take away his two worst outings, two two-inning, four-run affairs, and his ERA drops from 4.88 to 4.05. As it is, he’s appeared in 24 innings spanning 18 games, with his 43 strikeouts certainly catching the eye (that’s 16.1 K/9). Trey Jeans is their other top performer, 20 earned runs allowed over 30.1 innings in 17 games, with 17 walks and 42 strikeouts (5.93 ERA, 12.6 K/9).
The rest of the pen has numbers too grim to mention, if you’d like to play around yourself. After Glowicki and Jeans, nobody on the active roster has an ERA below 6.10. That’s seven pitchers.
Despite the club’s anemic pitching and tumbling W-L record, there are some very real bright spots in Winston, highlighted by Céspedes and Sosa. We’re past the equivalent of where the All-Star Break would have been had there been one for the league, so the end is in sight. We’ll see how the team adjusts to losing several of its top players over the next few weeks.
Photo credit: Anders Johanson/FutureSox
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